


air conditioning

by qmisato



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 23:39:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4118865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qmisato/pseuds/qmisato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>familiarity breeds contempt, as the saying goes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	air conditioning

Soryu Asuka Langley woke like she often did: unceremoniously, angry, and sweating like hell. Tossing the covers off, she rolled over to the edge of the bed and wondered again why she had to endure involuntary confinement within the lifeless hulk known as Katsuragi Misato’s apartment.

At least two or three times a month Asuka could count on the air conditioning malfunctioning, or jamming, or whatever excuse Misato came up with in delaying reinstallation. Which meant that at least two or three times a month Asuka could count on being forced out of slumber by a heatspell so intense that she literally drenched the bed in sweat. Misato was a creature of inertia and negligence, not of planning and responsibility, and regular upkeep was obviously too much work for her to handle. It was so pathetic.

With a heaving sigh, Asuka stood and made a beeline for the washroom. The small washroom. The small washroom that they all shared, another legacy of the the universe’s cosmic plan to make her life much worse than necessary. In a half-roused daze, Asuka randomly plucked one of the handtowels hanging in the room and pressed it to her face.

It took her a moment to realize, but the towel smelled so distinctly different – not dirty, but offensive all the while – that Asuka recoiled back on pure instinct. She stared at it in her hands, at a loss to form any suitable reaction. It was ragged. The material was fine. Lipstick stain.

Misato.

With a low growl she threw the cloth into the sink and stalked out to her room.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Abruptly, Asuka was thrust to the realm of the living. It was dark and distant thunder echoed in the thin walls of her room. She rolled onto her back. Where was she? It was hot. Oh, right. Misato’s apartment. Hell on Earth, Hell on Earth.

The glowing red digits of her alarm clock pulsed in the dimness, quivering in line with her bleary sight. 3:27 AM. 

She wanted a glass of water.

Asuka had been living in the apartment long enough that she felt comfortable navigating its halls at night. Out her room. Past the giant potted plant. Past the door of The Idiot. It was all very easy. At least, that was her thought, before her foot made contact with something soft.

Coming to a still pause, Asuka kicked it again, just to make sure that the heatwave wasn't inducing tactile illusions. Afraid she had just hurt the one domesticated creature that lived among her, she squatted and struggled to focus against the shadows.

Misato.

She was little more than a prostrate mass, arms extended in a unsubtle starfish formation. It was probably too much to hope that Misato had gotten up on her own to shamble either 1) exhaustedly or 2) drunkenly into her own room.

A million thoughts ran through Asuka’s mind in a moment of blinding clarity. Had Misato come back from a drunken tryst?  She beat the thought down and examined the scene again. She was still clothed in her NERV uniform. Good. That relieved some part – a large part – in Asuka. Her cropped red jacket was wrinkled beyond what sleeping in it could explain; stains on the cuffs and along the collar further evidence that Misato had been grinding away at something. She must have been called for nightshift before coming back here to crash.

Keeping her movements slow and sure, Asuka rose to a stand. Despite the overbearing heat, Misato looked... cold.

Why had she gone out, anyways?  She was supposed to be getting a glass of water, but she didn’t feel thirsty anymore.

Suddenly - with a low, disgusting noise - Misato began to snore.  Asuka spun around and started for her door as fast as she could.  One thought occupied her mind.  She had to get out.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Next time, she was staying at Hikari’s house.

She hated being alone here, and not for lack of of company - or at least, that’s what she insisted to herself, over and over and over again, until it became a mantra and not a reminder.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Soryu Asuka Langley woke like she often did: unceremoniously, angry, and sweating like hell. This time, it wasn’t the heat. She'd roused with her hands pressed against her face, in the midst of a grueling - if not intimately familiar - nightmare. It was an intensely powerful and disturbing dream. A shrill voice inside her head whispered insidious nothings as visions of herself, split in two, struggled against the pull of what Asuka knew to be Leliel’s shadow, taunting her with the eventual fate of being swallowed whole.

The post-nightmare amplified her normal waking disorientation tenfold. Asuka was scared as hell. This marked the second consecutive night she'd had this dream since Leliel’s defeat. There was little she could do but ride it out, letting the fear crash around, over, and through her, clinging desperately to her sanity, until she lay gasping for breath as her mind slowly reassembled itself. 

Operating on autopilot, Asuka got up and found the washroom. But something wasn't quite right - asides from the infernal throbbing of her head and cotton filled mouth. 

Noises.

She took stock.  Turning her head to the left, she recognized the source of the sound: Misato’s room. It almost sounded like laughter, maybe from a laptop or television. But that didn't explain the sense of not right she was getting.  Asuka inched closer and closer to the threshold that separated the washroom from Misato’s room, uncomfortably scratching her nails against her belly. Misato was laughing at something. Laughing? Then it hit her. Not laughing. Those weren’t sounds of joy. Those were sounds of pain. Those were sobs.

Misato was... she was...

“Crying," she whispered it aloud, just to prove she could.

 Asuka felt as if she'd been punched in the stomach for no discernible reason. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Her initial reaction was dread and nausea. That's how she was supposed to feel, right?

Several emotions flitted across her face in rapid succession. Irritation won the race, but was quickly overcome by some more base sense of hurt. Anger. Betrayal. Jealously.

_God... Get over it already! He’s fine, isn’t he? He escaped!_

The empty look turned into a pained smile.  Asuka was nearly floored by the force of her yell.

“How about you shut up and let me get some _sleep!”_

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The air conditioning was broken. Again.

"Aa~ah,” Misato’s voice intoned from the entrance hall, still as nauseatingly high-pitched and cheery as ever. Besides being irresponsible and slobbish, Misato was the fakest adult Asuka’s ever had the displeasure of knowing. There was a shuffling sound, as if someone was hauling in a handful of grocery bags. Probably all microwavable garbage, food with consistency that differed from styrofoam only by the shiny wrapper it came in.

Fake, fake, fake, fake, fake.

 “-Asuka, are you here? Sorry; I came later than expected, didn’t I? I wasn’t planning on staying so long, but I had to prepare an emergency report, and well, things got a little hectic back at NERV, so I couldn’t really answer your calls... Asuka, where are you?”

"Here," Asuka replied in a halfhearted tone, sprawled across the floor, nimble fingers wrapping around the remote control. She watched the volume on the television rise and rise and hoped that might discourage any further conversation from Major Fake-sato Katsuragi.

"Oh, ok. What’cha doing?"

No such luck. There was a brief hint of tension as Asuka turned her head to cast an irritated look over her shoulder, before returning her scowling gaze to the television screen.

"What does it look like I’m doing?"

"Hmmm... I'm going back to pick up Shinji-kun from the ward later,” Asuka frowned. Did Misato not hear her? Ever since her own mother's lack of sanity had become apparent to her at a very young age, a small part of Asuka started making a habit of doubting everyone else’s. Maybe Misato was finally losing it, so completely engrossed in her own thoughts that expecting mutually linear conversation from her was out of the question entirely. “You interested?"

The volume on the TV climbed a few decibels.

"The TV isn't going anywhere, _süße_."

"This rusty fossil can’t even be called a proper ‘TV’, and I'm not your _süße_ , Misato."

"With an attitude like that, you're not going to be anyone's _süße_ , süße."

_Good._

The D-rate drama show wasn't nearly as interesting as Asuka liked to pretend it was, and she found herself watching Misato's movements out of the corner of her periphery instead. Misato moved to the bedroll across from the table – couches, Asuka noted inwardly, were apparently not a staple of Japanese interior design. Asuka registered a slight feeling of satisfaction watching the older woman wrinkle her nose at a sweat stain, before giving it a good shake to free it from any bits of crumb and debris. When it looked like she was satisfied it was as clean as it was going to get, Misato flipped the bedding over and began the motions of shedding her jacket.

Asuka watched her all the while, her frown growing in proportion with the time passing. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"Huh... _mmm_ , catching up on my sleep."

"Now? _Here_?"

Misato tossed a half-amused look of her own from across her shoulder. "I’ve been awake for two days, if you haven't noticed. And it'll be a cold day in Japan before I’m sleeping in a room without windows!"

Annoyed at the lit of tease in her voice, Asuka rolled her eyes and wiped some sweat from her face. "Whatever," she grumbled, her eyes drifting back to its default position. She could hear Misato rustling from behind her, until the door of the patio slid open suddenly and Asuka found Misato staring out across the blinding sunlight. Instantly, the temperature in the living room crawled a few degrees and Asuka groaned. "You're not planning on going out there, are you?"

The room descended into silence at Misato’s lack of response. Her attention was fixed watching the neighborhood below her and Asuka sat up, the older woman’s peculiar silence making her distinctly uneasy. For a long while, Asuka just studied Misato’s back, wondering where her thoughts were drifting.

"I haven’t cried like that in a long time," Misato said unexpectedly. "His entry plug's energy reserves were so close to reaching their expiration point. I really thought that we were going to lose him back there.”

Asuka grew very still, unable to shoot down Misato’s sudden willingness to talk. Had she heard her in the washroom the other day? Asuka wasn't even certain if Misato was talking to her, or just letting an excess of thoughts spill out of her annoying head. Whatever the reason, she certainly wasn't planning on being a willing participant in this conversation, especially when the topic was...

"I came on him too harshly in the beginning," Misato continued, still looking out across the patio. "I treated him more like a soldier than a child. But he never lashed out at me. Not once. I don’t even think he blamed me for it. Just himself." Misato shook her head incredulously. "He’s a good boy. Those aren’t bad qualities; forgiveness and passivity."

Asuka closed her eyes and pinched her lips shut. She knew what this was, of course. Only an idiot could’ve failed to understand what had transpired between Shinji and Misato upon his retrieval from the Dirac Sea. Misato’s reaction wasn’t just professional. It was personal. Really personal. It was almost as if--

\--Asuka didn't care. She didn’t.

Letting the door of the patio slide shut, Misato looked over her shoulder at Asuka, "But it won’t happen again," she said, her voice quiet. "I’ll make sure of it. You guys are ours to protect." At that, Misato turned and padded back to her bedroll, averting her eyes as she passed her by. "Now I have a duty and…"

Asuka waited for her to finish, but Misato only laid herself down and put her back to her. Unable to contain her curiosity, Asuka asked, "And what?"

"And if you don’t turn off the TV by the time I count to three, I’m throwing it out the patio."

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Asuka glanced over at Ritsuko, typing away something on her terminal. These idiots weren’t hard to read, especially when it concerned their most exalted pilot Shinji-kun. Her expression could definitely be termed a scowl. "Why is this taking so long?" the young pilot demanded.

Ritsuko shrugged from her monitor, all professionalism and matter-of-fact-ness and impersonality. "Very large operation, very narrow limitations, never been done before – you can do the math."

At that moment, Asuka watched Misato get up from her chair and leave the room.

It was happening. Leliel all over again. But Asuka suspected this time was going to be much, much worse.

“ _Scheibe_.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

No party.

No present.

Not even a call.

Shinji’s more important, of course. Even when he’s obviously never coming back! He’s gone! And even if he did come back, he moved out, remember? And it was all Misato’s fault! How could she forget!

_I hate her._

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Today was December 6th. Asuka was eating her cereal, trying not to throw up.

“I’m so glad you're back, Shin-chan.”

_Yeah, well, I’m not. In fact, you could’ve stayed in your Eva for the rest of your life, for all I care._

“I’m... glad to be back, too."

_Yep, because there’s nothing like coming home to this garbage dump after a month of being little more than liquid stew, huh?_

“How’re you feeling?”

_Like shit. Oh, wait, you were asking Idiot Shinji._

“Fine, um. It still feels a little strange, but I think I’ll be okay.”

_Oh, don’t worry. Misato-san will make SURE of it. Can’t have Idiot Shinji not being okay under her watch!_

“That’s good to hear. Hm, the timing’s pretty incredible... you know why?”

_Because it happened after my birthday, Misato? The happy birthday you never even wished me?_

“Um... isn’t it your birthday in two days, Misato-san?”

 

Asuka stopped chewing her cereal.

She didn’t want to hear the rest of the conversation, so she left the table.

And then she threw up.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

That Misato was drunk out of her mind was immediately obvious. Even if Asuka hadn't seen the litter of empty beer cans decorate the edge of the dinner table, or smell the fulsome scent of alcohol in the air, Misato sported a gait that could only be described as a ‘wobble’. That she’d taken to drinking at the table for no rhyme and reason – whenever she wasn’t holed in her room, of course – did absolutely nothing to lessen the air of inadequacy she wore about her. Had she been wearing a neon sign reading 'Extremely Pathetic’, it would have been terribly redundant.

But that was okay. Asuka had been intending to confront her for a while, and it’s not like drunkenness impeded her resolve. Liquid courage was no real courage, after all.

Sitting down heavily at the table, Asuka bore into the other woman’s eyes with a piercing glare. “Why are you hiding things?”

At some point Misato had shortchanged her can of beer for a container of something-chicken-and-spicy tasting, which she was currently eating with vigor. "What?”

_Close your mouth when you chew, you pig. Didn’t your parents teach you manners?_

"I said, why are you hiding things? You’re been avoiding me lately, you know."

"I'm not avoiding you," Misato mumbled around the food.

Silence invaded the room. Asuka continued to watch as Misato shoveled a forkful into her mouth, chewing with a strange, furious passion.

"Then why didn’t you tell me?"

Misato’s eyes shot open, locking onto Asuka’s. "Tell you what?"

The return glare was even.  "You know what I’m talking about."

"What? I don’t--"

"--Yes, you do."

"No, I don’t."

"Yes."

"No."

" _Yes_."

Finally, something in Misato snapped, and her fist came bearing down on the table abruptly enough to knock over an empty can, or two, or five.  "What’s your problem, Asuka? Forget about messing with me today. Not in the mood."

Silence stretched on for several moments.  Asuka’s eyes focused on Misato’s face and then beyond that, as if seeing twenty miles into the distance. Then, slowly she stood, stalking away, as if resigned to the retreat back to her room. Instead, she spun, a wild look in her eyes, an accusing finger pointed unambiguously at Misato. “Kaji-san’s gone, isn’t he? And you probably have something to do with it!"

There was a long quiet between them as they stared at each other, one still riding the uncaring comet of power and frustration, the other in an intoxicated haze of shock and stun. And then just like that, insult and denial doused the shock and stun and Misato flared up.

“What are you— I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

"Liar!" Asuka found herself shouting, perhaps louder than she had originally anticipated. Being so angry, so aggressive towards Misato suffused her with an inexplicable sort of energy. Her finger was her scepter, stabbing accusingly with each screech. 

“Did you break up with him? Is he gone?"

Silence.

"He's gone, isn't he?”

More silence.

"I can see it all over your face! Was Shinji right, what he said to me?" She was ranting now, nearly incoherent with anger. “Is he really--”

More silence. For a second, Asuka thought she saw what looked like the beginnings of tears forming at the corner of Misato’s eyes.

_Damn you. It’s not true! It’s not!_

"Asuka, I’m telling you..." Misato warned shakily, gravely, her tone dropping an octave. "...to drop it."

"You did something," The tears did nothing to assuage Asuka’s rage. She snarled at her, her fists balling at her side. "You know I'm right, so you want to deny. That's it, isn't it?"

Misato lunged.

Asuka saw her come at her and side stepped her rush. Nevermind the alcohol, Misato’s body tore through the exact spot Asuka had occupied a fraction of a second ago with startling accuracy, and Asuka began to realize with a sickening sort of dread that the military training Misato often boasted of was _real_. She couldn't match her speed, and felt cold fingers close around her wrist. There was a sharp pain as Misato spun her around the table, throwing off her momentum long enough to allow Misato to ball her shirt collar up in her hands, lifting Asuka to her tip toes so she could peer into her face.

Asuka’s nostrils flared and pupils flexed as she was compelled to focus upon Misato’s suffocating closeness. Briefly, she wondered if she was going to die, a child strangled by her drunken commanding officer. "Let _go_ of me, you crazy bitch!!”

The smell of Misato’s breath, the weight of her body -- everything that reminded Asuka of the older woman came to her in an unyielding flood. Her cheap lavender perfume. Her fake chirpy voice. Her ugly green socks. Her raggedy handtowel. Her heavy flow tampons. Her disgusting beer. Her dirty apartment. Her unreliable air conditioning. Asuka felt like dying. She bared her teeth at her, her own anger rushing over her in a start of fury. She leaned forward, gaining some balance, and drove her knee up hard. Misato made a startled noise and moved a leg to protect her groin. There was a meaty sound as Asuka made contact, missing her objective by several inches, catching Misato in her lower abdomen. She gasped, releasing Asuka so fast she stumbled backwards and nearly fell.

As she doubled over and coughed, Asuka wiped her hands on her clothes and glared. There were spots of color high on her pale face, and her bright eyes were sparking with furor. "I should just leave," she said in a low voice.

Misato managed to right herself, her hand rubbing her sore stomach. She was evidently shaken by Asuka’s display, to such a degree that she couldn’t – or wouldn’t – even spare her a glance.

"I don't care what the hell you do, Asuka."

Her voice was really, really cold.

Asuka gave her a long, hard look before turning on her heel and disappearing out the door. Down the street. She wanted to stand by everything she'd said to her. She wanted to have no regrets. She wanted to leave, to be gone from her sight forever.

It was only until Asuka reached the furthest end of the road that she realized that she would be effectively lost, stranded, and directionless, in a strange city, in a strange country, that had already destroyed everything she ever loved without so much as an explanation or warning. Finding a place to sleep would be difficult, but she didn’t care, because Asuka had no intention of seeing Misato’s face ever again.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

_I don’t care what the hell you do, Asuka._

at least she heard it from her straight.


End file.
